These Two Have A Pretty Cool Fan Club

July 14, 2006|By JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, The Virginian-Pilot

PORTSMOUTH — Commonly used to bring relief on a hot day, fans made by this duo also bring a warm feeling.

Nina Hopewell Lodge keeps a fan at her desk among the transcripts and files in the Circuit Court Clerk's Office downtown. The handmade item, which is always within arm's reach, does much more than help keep her cool off on a hot day.

The laminated image affixed to a paint stirrer is a picture of her from two years ago. In the photo, her hair is shorter and less curly than it is now.

"In 2004, January, I had the breast cancer surgery and then four months of chemo and the eight weeks of radiation," Lodge said. "October of 2004, I took off my wig. Miss Kent, she was so precious. She ran and got her camera. She wanted to make this most beautiful fan."

Lodge choked up.

"Valerie, I can't talk," she said to Valerie Thomas, seated at a desk nearby. "It's just meant the world to me."

Thomas has a fan -- a birthday gift from their colleague Annie B. Kent, who works in the clerk's office part time.

"She'll do them just because, sometimes," Thomas said.

Eight years ago, when Miracle of Faith Baptist Church (Independent) was preparing to open, Kent said, she wanted to do something for the congregation -- provide fans that weren't from a funeral home.

"They said since they have these pictures, they want to put them on fans and give them away," said the Rev. Vernon S. Lee Sr., pastor of the church. "This has been sort of a ministry for them."

He said Annie and Walter R. Kent Sr. have made a fan for nearly every church occasion. Lee and his wife have a fan with a picture of them inside a heart. The Kents have made fans for family reunions and civic organization functions, as well as for friends and family.

The couple produce the fans at their Cavalier Manor home. The fans are a mixture of digital camera work, computer publishing and crafting.

"She came up with the idea," Walter Kent said. "At first, they were square."

"They were funny," his wife said, laughing.

"Then we made them round," he said.

Annie Kent handles photography, while her husband does the assembly. A picnic table in their backyard shows, colorfully, where they have painted the wooden paint stirrers.